another reformation

I am ashamed to say that I have barely put a dent in the New Year's resolutions I spelled out last week. I'm putting it off, waiting to get over the "hump" that is actually just a plateau of too many things to take advantage of in life, too many tasks that beg my attention, too many people to be with, too many prepositions to end sentences with.

This last weekend was my last planned travel weekend for awhile: Back in November or December, I was roped into volunteering to be a small group leader at the annual Delaware-Maryland Synod high school retreat, called Roadtrip.

Roadtrip is what brought me to Baltimore the first weekend in January for training, and brought me again over the MD border to Ocean City for the actual event. Let me explain briefly what this event looks like.

Theoretically, all the Lutheran churches in Delaware and Eastern Maryland send youth to this big hotel in Ocean City. In reality, it ends up being mostly Maryland youth for complicated political, geographic, and economic reasons, but we're still talking a couple hundred kids, plus adult chaperones, pastors, small group leaders, service workers, and event organizers. We take over ballrooms, entire floors of the hotel, the staircases and elevators. We sing, clap, dance, swim, walk on the beach, do crafts and activities, eat, complete scavenger hunts, and discuss things with a certain filter.

After my post last week, I was feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin. I didn't want to go. I felt roped in, convinced by someone who approached me at an optimistic moment to take on a pointless task, to lead students in a too-rigid curriculum and evangelistic agenda. To make things worse, on Friday morning I came into work to find everyone buzzing about the impending Winter Weather Advisory (which in Delaware means one inch of snow over the course of 7 hours or so, horrible driving conditions, and a fresh buttload of salt thrown haphazard all over the roads and parking lots). Stressful as this already was, I had made a rushed decision on my way out of the house that morning not to bring my warm coat or snow boots.

I got some stern talkings-to about my attitude, about making the best of things and putting some positive energy into the situation at hand. So I tried to fake it and focus on the not-so-bad parts, the not-having-to-make-food parts, and the coming-home-at-the-end-of-the-weekend part.

To make a long story short, my misgivings started to dissolve as soon as we were on our way down south. In fact, I left OCMD feeling spiritually refreshed and uplifted, and reminded of some very beautiful gifts the world, the church, and young people have to share. (Bookmark this page, dear readers, for the next time I put up a stink about some good-hearted commitment I made. It happens every time.) If I was a different person, a different, older member of my family, perhaps, I might say that I felt the power of the Holy Spirit. I guess I can't deny that I am tiptoeing around using those words, but that does not by any means erase the misgivings I still hold about church.

This lengthy introduction brings me to my first point: The Church, as an institution, seems to be losing touch not only with modern American culture but also with some of its core principles. I don't think I ever got to the point of denying that the Bible is one of the greatest stories ever written, or that Jesus was a quack/did not exist. (In fact I find the second point irrelevant. He was a cool dude, whether he actually existed or not, and I think we could all serve to learn something from him.) I have been known to rant about institutionalized religion being one of the most brilliant forms of population control ever dreamed up by us human beans and our ancestors, and as we know it today it has gone through so many cultural permutations and translations of translations that I can't help but question how we still cling to its sacred traditions as God's will. I think it works for some people and has made some great contributions to society, but by focusing all our energy and defensiveness on church we're missing the point.

Heathen ranting and raving aside, I love our bishop. He is a brilliant speaker, a model leader, and most importantly he is unashamedly human. In his sermon on the last day, he began by saying something like this:

"I really enjoy spending time with all of you. I have been here all weekend and I have been watching all of you, and I learned something from you this weekend. People say you are the future of the church, but I have seen this weekend that you are the present of the church. We need your energy and we need your vision, because the church is changing really, really fast. We are on the threshold of what I hope is another reformation."

WHAT did he just say?! These are the words I have been waiting to hear from a church leader for years now. As I was finishing my business at St. Olaf a friend and mentor mentioned to me that a pattern has been found since the founding of the Christian church 2000-some years ago: Every 500 years (give or take) the church goes through a major earth-shaking. First it was the end of persecution in the 4th century and widespread adoption of Christianity as a major world religion; this is when it started to play a major role in shaping Western Civilization. At the second milestone we see the Crusades; Martin Luther took the stage around 1500 A.D., and now here we are kicking off the 2000s and no new prophet to be found. Apparently some people thought the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries were it, but look how long that lasted.

Here's the first thing to change: You would expect cell phones to be definitively banned from such retreats; but this weekend, in what I see as an absolutely brilliant move by organizers, cell phone use was encouraged in the large group sessions and during worship. The bishop actually asked us to send a text or tweet during his sermon. Brilliant!

The theme of the retreat was love. Love! Love who, what, when, where, why, and how. Love your neighbors, love the outcasts; love God. Love your family and friends and people who just really get on your nerves. Love the homeless and the hungry. Love people who look and talk different. Love people you've never met, never seen. Because we are all God's children. We all share the earth we have been given. We depend on each other. Because Jesus did.

Here's where I think we have something to learn. Jesus didn't go to church. He preached outside synagogues. He ate and drank with people who weren't allowed inside religious buildings. He chastised church leaders and scared the bejeezus out of them (ha, ha, see what I did there?). Jesus healed people on Sundays!!!!! (Didn't God warn him about the ten commandments before he sent him down here?!)

These days churches claim that they channel the word of God, that they do what they do in Jesus' name. But, pretty much since Jesus died the first time (OK, since anyone called religion something and started gathering people under religious pretenses) the church is all about rules and restrictions. Religion imposes a moral code and churches guilt people into not stepping out of line. Where is the love?

I can't say that religion is all bad, or that it's become only restrictions. I'm Lutheran because I can get on board with grace and forgiveness and fellowship and treating people with respect in Jesus' name.

...OK, I'm Lutheran because my parents are Lutheran, but I haven't completely thrown off the yolk because of those things I just wrote. Those are good things. Anyway, I still think the Black-Eyed Peas raised a valid question: Where is the love???

Well, I found it this weekend. I found it in my small group, these amazing, wide-eyed and open-hearted 18-year-olds; each of them was a completely different entity, but they came together with such compassion and intellect you wouldn't believe. I found it in my fellow small group leaders, many of whom made up "the Delaware contingent." We are tied together by our carpools and our home state, and by our willingness to be tied to each other inextricably by something greater than a synod and a shared road trip (ha, ha, I am so punny). I found it in the openness of everyone I met, adult or teenager, regardless of ability or interests or origin. I found it in the dedication to service, on a national, international, and local scale. I found it in those who spoke to us and shared their stories. I found it in the confidence of young people in vocation, that it exists and that it is within our reach to do something we are called to do. I found it in the sunrise over the ocean, in the frozen sand caked with snow, in the baby seagulls scurrying out of the way of the frigid waves.

I found love in a hopeless place, in a snowstorm and politics and disappointment and wavering faith and the apocalyptic anxiety of a church that feels out of date and unable to survive the next 50 years.

I found love 14 stories below me, in a man walking his dog on the beach at 7:00 in the morning, as he paused to turn and gaze out over the ocean before his day began.